The morning sky hung heavy with slate-gray clouds, draping over New York City. The small funeral hall on 12th Street that Luke had rented smelled like wooden incense and lilies.
“Memorial service,” the sign outside said in quiet black letters. There was no body, no urn. Just a framed photo on a stand: Eathan Lin in his COZMART hoodie, one hand half?raised as if caught mid?wave, fridge light painting his profile.
Luke had picked the photo. Sera had taken it. Emily had printed it on the best paper she could afford.
The hall wasn’t large, yet it felt abnormally so due to its vacancy. The three of them were the only ones present who actually came for him; the rest were passersby and an officiant Luke had hired to recite farewell passages and tear-jerking hymns.
Luke tuned most of it out.
He sat in the front row, hands locked together between his knees, staring at the frame. His eyes burned. He refused to blink too much.
Emily sniffed beside him, pretending to adjust her glasses every time she wiped at the corner of her eye. Sera sat very still on his other side, fingers knotted around her camera strap, the lens cap still on.
“…He really didn’t know anyone, huh,” Luke muttered.
Emily shifted, shoulders tight beneath her black coat. “He told us once his parents died when he was little,” she said. “Car accident. No other relatives. It was always just him and Mister White and that shop.”
Sera’s gaze stayed fixed ahead. “Maybe he liked it that way,” she said. “Quiet.”
“It’s too quiet,” Luke said. He swallowed, throat tight. "I still can’t wrap my head around it. I mean, he was right there—we all saw him in COZMART. And I just keep thinking—that corner shop right there in the middle of the street! How could only one building blow up?"
"Static leak, or faulty wiring, they said," Emily replied, repeating what they'd heard from the firefighters. "That's what they’re officially saying. Even though none of the surrounding stores were touched, they still claim it's just some unfortunate coincidence."
Luke shook his head. "But no body, just ashes? And no clear identification yet. That’s just suspicious."
“They said it was windy. Makes it harder to confirm, especially if he was…" Sera’s voice trailed off, hesitant.
"Yeah, cremated on the spot," Luke finished bitterly. "It makes it easier for them to just wave it off as an accident. Convenient for whoever's behind this.”
Emily sighed. "But who would be behind something like this? Eathan didn’t have enemies. Honestly, he barely had acquaintances.”
"Exactly my point,” he scowled, glancing around the empty rows behind them. "And look at this. Not to mention that weird boss of his. Did anyone even try calling him? He’s practically the closest thing to Eathan’s legal guardian. The number Taeril White left you guys—"
“That number he gave us never connected.” Emily’s expression hardened. “It was probably fake.”
Luke’s hands curled into fists. "That man always rubbed me the wrong way," he muttered. "Who does that? Your employee explodes and you don’t even—"
“But Eathan trusted him,” Emily said. “Maybe he had his reasons.”
“Or maybe he’s just an asshole.”
Luke’s voice quivered, sounding like it was on the verge of breaking into a sob again, prompting Sera to hastily offer another tissue.
They fell silent again, the mournful quiet broken only by distant traffic and the muted creak of old wood.
In the far corner of the hall, shadows stirred.
A faint shimmer, barely perceptible, gathered above the old radiator. Threads of light weaved out of nowhere, eventually knotting themselves into a shape—two shapes.
One taller, one shorter, both washed out and translucent, hovering above like reflections on dirty glass.
Outside, twilight had soaked the street in indigo and sodium?yellow. The funeral hall’s sign flicked off with a reluctant buzz.
Luke, Emily, and Sera lingered on the sidewalk, breaths fogging in the cold.
“So,” Luke said eventually. He wiped his face with a sleeve, though his eyes remained red-rimmed. “What now?”
Traffic hissed past. Somewhere, a siren wailed half?heartedly, far away.
"I don't know.” Emily hugged her jacket tighter. “We could… contact his distant families? Professors? See if they want to know. Or if the school wants to do something.”
"He mentioned that sub-in once,” Luke recalled. “What’s his name again?”
"Professor Quine Long from Chinese Myth," Emily corrected quietly. “He liked Eathan. Or at least, he noticed him.”
Sera’s gaze had drifted upward to where a nearby bodega’s neon sign flickered in stubborn pink. It reminded her, uncomfortably, of another sign that used to hum at a different corner.
“Maybe Eathan kept his life quiet on purpose,” she said.
“On purpose?” Luke looked back at the dark windows of the hall. “You mean, like, witness protection from his sketchy boss?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Just… when someone doesn’t talk about a part of their life, it’s either boring, or it’s important. And nothing about that shop felt boring.”
Emily frowned. “Even if Mister White is shady, we don’t have proof he did something. The investigation report said faulty wiring.”
“That’s what they say,” Luke muttered.
“Luke.” Emily bumped his shoulder. “Blaming his boss won’t bring him back.”
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“I know,” he said, shoulders slumping. “It just… feels unfinished, you know? Like he walked out mid?conversation and forgot to come back.”
Sera’s fingers tightened unconsciously on her camera strap. “Then maybe,” she said softly, “the best thing we can do is remember him as he was. Not as… smoke.”
Luke made a strangled noise that might’ve been agreement.
They stood there a moment longer, three silhouettes in the winter dusk, until cold finally drove them apart.
“Text if you can’t sleep,” Emily said, pointing at both of them. “Seriously.”
“Yeah,” Luke said. “We can group?traumabond.”
It made all three of them huff weak laughs. Then they split—Emily toward the subway, Luke toward his chauffeur, Sera in the opposite direction, toward her rented building.
Above them, invisible, two spectral threads followed Sera’s path like invisible kites.
***
Sera Dream walked on alone.
The city hummed around her—cars rolling past, a siren in the far distance, some guy laughing too loud outside a bodega—but everything sounded like it was coming through glass. Her boots clicked an even rhythm against the snow. In one hand, she still clutched the folded funeral pamphlet with Eathan Lin printed in solemn serif across the front.
She shoved it deeper into her coat pocket before she could look at it again.
The air was mild, but she couldn’t shake the chill. Grief did that, she supposed—rewrote the temperature for you. Every time she blinked, she saw snapshots: the nearly empty funeral hall, the flowers that looked like they’d been delivered to the wrong address, Luke’s voice cracking halfway through the eulogy he insisted wasn’t a eulogy.
By the time she turned onto her block, the sky had drifted into a washed-out blue-grey, streetlamps flicking on one by one. The familiar curve of her street should’ve felt safe. Instead, it felt… thinner, colder.
Halfway up the walkway, she slowed.
There was something on her porch.
At first glance, it was nothing: a box, medium-sized, wrapped in plain brown paper, sitting neatly in the center of the doormat. But deliveries these days went to secure lockers or drop drones, not front steps like some retro drama.
She paused, frowning slightly as she stopped at the foot of the steps.
Every tired neuron in her brain was voting for: Not tonight. Maybe some courier messed up. Maybe she could ignore it until morning.
But the box sat stubbornly in the porch light glow.
With a quiet curse, Sera climbed the steps.
The shadows deepened around her as she drew closer. Up close, the package was even less helpful—no sender, no holostamp, not even a receiver code—just neatly tied twine and a single cream envelope tucked under the knot.
It was then she spotted her name, written in tight, familiar letters:
[Sera Dream].
Sera's stomach dropped before her mind finished catching up.
She knew that handwriting.
Her fingers went numb for half a second. Then she shook herself, keying open the door with her free hand and nudging it shut with a hip. The apartment greeted her with its usual soft hum: the fridge clicking, the faint buzz of the old heater. Lights came on with a muted flick.
Sera set the box gently on the coffee table, standing over it for a long moment.
“Okay,” she muttered. “This is either a very late condolence gift or the start of a horror movie.”
The flaps folded back with a soft scrape.
Two smaller boxes sat inside, cushioned in foam, and between them lay an envelope of cream paper, her name written on it in familiar, cramped handwriting.
Sera’s breath hitched.
The paper was thicker than standard holo-mail—real stationery, slightly textured. Her thumb hesitated on the flap, then slid under and tore it open in one clean line.
A single sheet slid out, folded twice.
She unfolded it—and the world narrowed to the first three words.
Dear Sera,
Her throat locked.
The handwriting was unmistakable. The same careful, slightly compressed print she’d seen on COZMART inventory notes and passive-aggressive sticky reminders about “please do not reorganize the gum display again.”
Eathan.
Her vision swam for a second. Rational brain tried to jump in with a dozen explanations—pre-written, scheduled delivery, weird legal nonsense—anything that made sense. None of them landed.
She forced herself to keep reading.
If you’re reading this, something I planned has actually worked for once—and I’m sorry for the confusion it’s caused.
I’m not really gone yet. Not entirely, anyway.
Her knees wobbled, and she sat down hard on the couch without meaning to, the cushion sighing under her weight.
She read the lines again, slower this time, lips moving soundlessly over each word.
Below COZMART, there’s a storage room.
You know the passcode, right?
Mister White would’ve told you and Emily when he roped you into covering for him.
You’re the only person I trust to do this.
At midnight, bring the urns down to the storage room. The layout might be a bit different from what you remember—don’t panic. Someone will come guide you.
This part’s important:
Let your memory guide the gate open.
Think about the shop. Me yelling at the fridge. Chewie grumbling about your latte art. Your grief, your irritation, your “I told you so”—all of it.
The Realm listens to that more than it listens to passwords.
If anything happens, trust yourself first. You’re stronger than you know. (Sorry, that sounded like a motivational poster. Couldn’t help it.)
I owe you one for this. Probably more. But please, trust me one more time.
See you again soon, I hope.
– Eathan
By the time she reached the signature, Sera realised she’d been holding her breath. It escaped all at once in a shaky exhale that left her a little dizzy.
She stared at the letter, reading and re-reading until the words blurred at the edges, turning into just shapes she knew by muscle memory.
Not gone. Not completely.
She laughed, once—a small, broken sound that didn’t know whether it wanted to be relief or fury.
Only then did she remember the remainder of the package.
Very carefully, she set the letter aside. The boxes came next; she picked at the tape until it broke, then lifted the lid.
Inside, nestled in plain packing straw, sat two pale ceramic urns.
They were simple and unadorned, each about the length of her forearm. Her fingers hovered over them, suddenly clumsy.
She forced herself to look.
Small plaques were fixed to the fronts, names etched in deliberate black strokes:
[Eathan Lin].
[Chewie Jiang].
The funeral had been abstract in a way. No body, just an explosion, a casket with nothing inside, an officiant reading generic lines about “bright futures” and “gone too soon” for a boy who’d never even given them a proper next-of-kin to contact.
This, though—two urns on her second-hand coffee table with her friend’s name carved into one—made it cruelly, viscerally concrete.
Her eyes burned.
“Are you kidding me,” she whispered, voice cracking. “You mailed me your ashes?”
The urns, predictably, did not answer.
She pressed the heels of her hands briefly into her eyes until the stinging blurred back down to manageable.
She picked up the Eathan urn. It was heavier than it looked—solid, cool ceramic against her palms. The idea that anything belonging to him was inside there made her stomach twist.
Her thumb traced the engraved letters once before she set it back down with precision, as if any sudden movement might shatter whatever fragile rules this insane situation was running on.
For a long, stretched minute, she just sat there, hands slack in her lap, listening to her own heartbeat in her ears.
Then, she reached for the letter again.
Midnight. Storage room. Gate.
COZMART’s back room flashed across her mind unbidden, from the old metal shelves to Mister White’s terrible “safety drill” lecture when she and Emily first came in.
Her chest squeezed.
“It’s a crossroads,” she repeated under her breath. “Of course it is. Because why would it ever just be a convenience store.”
Outside, a car rolled by, headlights sliding briefly across her window. Inside, the apartment’s shadows seemed to gather around the coffee table, like the room itself was holding still to hear her answer.
Sera folded the letter along its original creases, hands steadier now than they had any right to be. She slid it back into the envelope, then tucked it into her jacket pocket—next to the funeral pamphlet with the same name on it.
Two different versions of reality, side by side.
Her gaze moved once more over the urns, over the names, over the impossible curve of Eathan’s handwriting on the envelope.
Grief and something much sharper tangled in her chest.
“You better not be lying about seeing me again, Eathan.”